In Your Nature
by Charlotte88
Summary: One-shot. "Science explains the feeling of love in terms of chemicals and neurotransmissions and pathways in the brain. Our bodies are designed to let us know when we're attracted to someone. Like breathing, it is innate."


**In Your Nature**

Sometimes, his fingers brush hers and she shivers.

Sometimes, his lips linger on the corner of her mouth and she forgets how to breathe.

Sometimes, he looks at her and her world stops.

She is a scientist. She believes in what she can see, what she can understand. She lives in a world of her own making; a prism of logic and rationale.

In science, worlds don't stop. Breathing is an innate reflex that isn't possible to forget. Shivers occur when body temperature drops below average.

Everything is quantifiable, everything can be explained.

Except for what she feels for him.

Science is truthful and honest. Science doesn't lie. Science doesn't cheat. Science doesn't run away or abandon you.

Like the tide, and the moon, and the seasons, science is steady.

It is constant.

Like him.

He is constant.

She is afraid of his constancy.

She is more afraid of the day it disappears.

It did once before. The pain was immeasurable, then, all-consuming and devastating.

She's scared of feeling like that again.

But it's only a matter of time.

All people leave her eventually. She's evolved to deal with that.

She holds people at arm's length.

So does he.

She consciously destroys relationships.

So does he.

They would destroy each other.

Science explains the feeling of love in terms of chemicals and neurotransmissions and pathways in the brain. Our bodies are designed to let us know when we're attracted to someone.

Like breathing, it is innate.

What science fails to account for is why it _hurts_ so damn much.

Her whole body aches for him, sometimes.

Her heart feels heavy.

And her faith in science is shaken. Because what she feel for him in inexplicable. It doesn't have an explanation rooted in science.

But rather, in emotion.

In late night takeaways and a dodgy movie.

In her ringing him at 2am and knowing he'll answer.

In letting him take her by the hand after a bad day.

In letting him hold her close to his chest after a bad week.

In him knowing her favourite everythings and just how she takes her coffee.

In his kisses on her cheek.

In the way he looks at her sometimes, like he's gazing into her very soul.

No. Her feelings are most definitely not rooted in science.

Occasionally (if she's in a particularly fanciful sort of mood) she even wonders whether he feels the same way.

She suspects, on some level, that this is the case.

How could it not be?

After everything.

And it is then that she resolves to do something about it.

Stalemates can be never-ending.

Dragging on for years because neither side is willing to tumble over that precipice into the unknown.

Someone has to make the first move.

Her queen needs to find his king, and so what if a few pawns get destroyed on the way?

Perhaps not the best analogy, but hey, it's been years since she's played chess and who cares anyway?

She decides, as she drives to his apartment, that there is something to be said for spontaneity.

Normally she would be totally opposed to doing something without thinking, without planning and carefully deciding any and all potential outcomes.

Normally she doesn't do anything if she doesn't know how it's going to turn out.

The risks are too great.

It's self-preservation on a detrimental scale.

She's so boringly_ safe_.

Well, she was.

Because now she's standing on his doorstep, and it's quite possible that she's about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

And ruin something that's already really quite amazing.

It's just ... not enough anymore.

And she knows it.

But what if...

Oh, bugger it. It has to be done.

And so when he opens the door,

she kisses him.

Hard and fast, right on the mouth.

He staggers, caught off-guard.

She can't blame him; she's surprised at herself.

But she doesn't stop, not even for a second.

Because it just feels so _right_.

And she doesn't care what science says, she doesn't care about pheromones and hormones and sexual attraction. She doesn't care that this might not work and doesn't notice that a tiny part of her is waiting for a rejection. She doesn't care that he might leave her and she might fall apart again.

She stopped giving a damn the moment she felt his arms curl protectively around her back.

And, let's be honest, she can't be expected to string a coherent thought together under these conditions anyway.

Not when he and the wall are the only things keeping her upright.

Not when he's murmuring her name against her hot skin.

Not when his tongue is in her mouth like that.

Not when his fingers are straying to ... places they shouldn't be.

Or should be.

Hell, she's not complaining.

He has always looked good in a t-shirt, she thinks as her hands slip underneath it.

(That fanciful side of her also rather thinks he would look quite good without it and so she pulls it over his head.)

She doesn't think much else after this.

All she knows is that somewhere between her pouncing on him and falling asleep in his arms a long while later, he told her that he loved her.

And, maybe, she told him, too.

And yes, they're inexplicable. Yes, they're complicated and messy and it isn't going to be as easy as having sex and falling into the perfect relationship.

She doesn't understand them. She doesn't know what it is exactly about Harry Cunningham that makes her forget how to breathe and brings worlds to a halt.

But it's a start.

(A bloody good one, too.)

She has a lot to learn.

A long way to go.

But he does as well.

Come on, it's got to be worth stepping off that precipice, hasn't it? Diving headfirst into the wilderness, no matter what the consequences?

Because stalemate becomes checkmate, and, really, isn't that all anybody wants?

(She also realises in this moment that she needs to stop with the goddam chess analogies.)

**end**

* * *

**I know, I know. I don't write anything for ages and then what I do eventually upload turns out to be ... well, this weird thing that's kind of a poem crossed with a short story crossed with god knows what. Don't judge me, my muse is so screwed up lately.**

**I'll write more soon. Promise. And it will be something with actual substance, I swear.**

**xo**


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